Saturday, November 26, 2011

I haven't managed to pick up the game yet, but this little fact has been confirmed on boardgamegeek:

Along with all of the envelopes that say "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL [game event X]", there is one envelope that says "DO NOT OPEN. EVER."

And there is definitely stuff in there.

As a purist, I plan on following the instructions completely, and literally never opening it (at least not until long after there's ever a chance of playing the game again), and staying away from spoilers about its contents.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

For those who don't know what it is (and don't feel like reading the BGG link above)..

You've probably heard of Risk.

It's like that, except everything changes.

During and after each game, you literally modify the game components. New rules, new cities (named by the players), a list of winners... adding and DESTROYING things. Secret card packs that are opened at specific points in the game, which aren't necessarily in order.

Everything down to the basic rules changes.

After 15 games, you're basically done "creating the new world", and you still have a customized boardgame which is affected by the people playing it.

It seems like a great game to encourage a playgroup to regularly meet.

15 games of BSG can be fun and result in cool stories, but 15 games of Risk Legacy end with a game you uniquely designed.

I can't wait for it to be available, I will try and get PlayGamesWithJosh to play it as much as possible.

Friday, November 4, 2011

PGWJ actually happened this past Wednesday, and it was pretty awesome.

Some old friends from college came over who I haven't seen in a bazillion years, AND we played Glen More! Twice!

So, Glen More is a pretty neat game. It is a collection of a whole bunch of little Euro mechanics in a single Scottish package. (Although, just as with many Eurogames, the theme doesn't matter).

My real only gripe with Glen More is the cube resources. A few times we had trouble telling between the Gray and White cubes in costs, and they do take away from the little bit of theme that there is. If Power Grid can have fuel that is at least roughly representative, then Glen More should have sheep that look like sheep. I might order those animeeples from Maydaygames after all.

The game itself sometimes feels like Carcassone (meeples, and tile-laying that needs to respect a river and road), but it also has trading mechanics (the market, which you can only use when necessary, so you can't deliberately monopolize a resource) and a very cool scoring system.

You get points based on the difference in how much of a Thing (chieftains, whiskey, and special locations) you have more than the person with the least.

So if you focus only on Whiskey and Distilleries, for example, then you're going to be giving away points to everyone else who has been collecting other stuff.

In the end, you actually lose significant points if you have too many tiles more than the guy with the least, which is a nice balancing factor.

The turn-order, which allows you to have an imbalance of tile numbers, is based on your meeples walking around in a perpetual circle. Really, it's easier (for me) to visualize it as one of those cartoon escape sequences, where the characters are constantly running and the path behind them is crumbling away...

The person at the end of the line gets to take a turn (pick up and activate tiles). If they're still at the end of the line, they get another turn, etc. If you jump too far ahead for a good tile, you'll be waiting around for your next turn. But if you take too many baby steps, those tiles had better net you more than 3 points each in the end.

I really like how it all fits together, and looking forward to playing it again. It even has built-in mechanics for playing with 2 players (a die that randomly eats tiles), although I'm not sure how well that plays. Worth a shot.